A ‘C suite’ leader with over 20 years in Travel Retail working for industry leading organisations both land and sea Dufry/Avolta & Harding+ Sue has worked across retail and travel retail businesses for a significant part of her career, spending 13 years in senior Marketing roles at Dufry/World Duty Free, before making the switch of the last 7 years in cruise retail. She has also spent 10 years as Marketing Director at UK high street electrical specialists Powerhouse Retail as part of a MBO team.

Her remit across all organisations was to create the brand ethos, look and feel, and lead the spirit and energy of the brand and customer experience evolution across the business. Her roles ensured that people, working culture and inclusion across landside and shipboard communities, brand consistency, sustainability and engaging storytelling are always front in centre. This involves drive and leadership of the strategic approach to all internal and external brand and culture communications representing the business to all stakeholders as both the leading partner for the cruise/airport industry and a best-in-class employer.

Her roles also carry responsibility for brand design and development and capital investment for shipboard shops, to ensure they come to life with innovative display strategies and smart use of digital at sea, for both new cruise line partnerships, and for refurbs, refits and transformation projects.

Sue played a key role as part of the Harding+ Exec team as one of a team of 11 that led the business into new ownership post pandemic as the cruise industry recovered from full on pause, as part of a hugely successful CVA approach. She created the ‘retailtainment’ concepts of “contentainment,” a media and marketing global network for World Duty Free/ Dufry and OceantainmentTM for the cruise industry as the business model for merging marketing with live in store brand experiences that links closely to each cruise or airports brand personality and driving customers to the retail arena as their destination, whilst optimising the customer unique dwell time which is especially important for cruise. She also played an instrumental role in building the ‘Quaternity’ model, which blends retail expertise with unique guest insight, Cruise line insights and Brand insights to deliver best in class for creativity and planning, Her strategic specialisms include partnership approaches to shared strategies, organisational and relationship culture, marketing innovation and customer experience strategy, change management and communications strategy and store space and design.